King Alfred the Great lay peacefully with his family for more than 500 years until the tumultuous rule of Henry VIII witnessed the dissolution of the
monastries.

St Barthomew's church (located on King Alfred's place, no less) is now believed to own the land where the great monarch lies, but even if permission
is granted to exhume the bones, there are likely to be complications identifying the skeleton.

However Alfred died more than a thousand years ago. Katie Tucker, an archaeologist from Winchester University told The Times "the problem is where
would we get a comparative sample from? It's a hell of a lot further to go back to trace a living descendentt

This should be interesting. He was the only King to have ' Great' in the prefix to his name.

He ruled in a time of mist, magic and legend - I would love to go back to that time for a day.

He was the King of the West Saxons - 871 - 899, I cannot even imagine that far back. Apparently he fought the Vikings and the Danes. His father was
King Ethelwulf and his brothers who were kings before him were Ethelbald, Ethelbert and Ethelred.

I wonder where they are buried ?

These are some interesting legends about him :

King Alfred lived from 849 to 899AD and was born in Wantage. He died in Winchester, the then capital city.

The Blowing Stone, a perforated sarsen stone in Kingston Lisle, near Uffington, is reputedly how King Alfred summoned his Saxon troops, in
readiness for the nearby Battle of Ashdown against the Vikings.

Also, according to legend, a person who is capable of making the blowing stone sound a note that is audible at the White Horse will be a future
King of England

He is a very mysterious King - and he is also famous for allegedly burning the cakes:

The story goes that Alfred was down on his luck and so he travelled, anonymously, he sought lodgings in a poor womans hut, he was then asked to watch
the cakes cooking on the fire, He then got a good old scolding from her when he let the cakes burn, as he let his mind wander, he failed to notice.
.

After the discovery of Richard III's remains, archaeologists trying to find Alfred the Great have applied to exhume and study bones in an
unmarked grave that may be those of the Saxon king.

The application to dig at St Bartholomew Church in Winchester, Hampshire, comes after a possible earlier burial of him under the nearby ruined Hyde
Abbey was dug up in the 19th century.

Dr Katie Tucker from the University of Winchester said it was not known if the bones of the king were disturbed when Hyde Abbey was dissolved by Henry
VIII in the 1530s.

Since then there have been several digs at the site, all suggesting they have found the bones, with some on display in Winchester in the 19th century
before they were buried in the unmarked grave at the church.

This should be an interesting subject and history lesson for us all. S&F, Good find! I didn't realize only one King of England had "the Great"
attached to his name.

For fans of King's being dug up (there is talk in the States of digging up Dr. Martin Luther King, just to keep up with the digs in England)(ok, not
really), there are two good threads on the burial, discovery, history, and controversies of King Richard III. But save them until reading this one.

According to the wikipedia page Alfred's body may have been lost when a prison was built on the site, the forgotten cemetery was dug up, and bones and
whatever else was there were tossed about. People seemed to be going through the place looking for valuables buried with the bodies (one of my
hobbies, by the way). Would it be even possible to locate the scattered remains, let alone identify them as the OP mentioned.

EDIT: Even though the cache of bones they will look at contains only five skulls, and thus, as the linked article says, it should be easy to determine
ages of the deceased, and then to carbon date to see if the most likely candidate is from the correct time period, if the cemetery itself was dug up
and strewn about it would be pure luck that the correct bones were gathered and placed into the monestary. I do hope this ends in success though, and
will be crossing my fingers that yet another great (pun intended) find will shortly emerge.

One good thing this news does is focus us once again on a great period of English history. Alfred, who fended off the Vikings, needs a revival. Is
there a Alfred the Great Society as there is a Richard III Society?

Bumping around the web it looks like the Alfred the Great Society is a right wing outfit having nothing to do with Alfred other than his name. I'll
wander off and not monoplolize this space, and later in the day the Americans will turn their lonely eyes to this thread to learn and be enlightened
to another of England's great Kings.

Alfred is a weird one for me. I feel i should be more "bothered" (for want of a better word) about Alfred but he has always been one of those "meh,
whatever" kings for me.

He rarely fought (left it to others), was sickly and completely dominated by the Church. The only truly useful thing he did (from what i have read but
i could be forgetting all sorts!) was to have Burghs constructed all over Wessex. This prevented the Vikings from conquering Wessex as they simply
couldn't afford to risk men in assaulting fortified towns. People often overlook the fact this was an era where a band of 300 Warriors was a large
war band! The reality is that this is the real decision that prevented complete Viking domination.

During these years Viking armies never comprised more than 3 to 4 thousand men, all of whom were transported by long ship. A chieftain would not
commit his crew to a battle unless they heavily outnumbered the enemy as any losses would have a serious impact on their ability to get their ships
back to sea (couldn't afford to lose crewmen).

I am not really sure what Alfred ever did that deserved the description "Great". That said though, he was the King at the time and the Vikings never
took his kingdom completely. And he was the one who envisaged England.

This may not be as daft as it sounds.
Alfred's granddaughter Eadgyth who married the Holy Roman Emperor, was buried at Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany and fragments of her body have just
been returned to England - so we have a DNA reference right there.

In Winchester Cathedral, there are many caskets containing the ( supposed ) remains of some very early Saxon kings - I say supposed because during the
reformation, many of these were emptied out into the street (!).
These were then gathered up and returned to their caskets, but whose bones in what casket goodness only knows.

Should any of you history buffs get the chance to visit the cathedral then you should take it - well worth your time.
For those of you who cannot , link here winchester-cathedral.org.uk...

Thanks for sharing your knowledge again Flavian, you are clearly very good with your history.

Yes I would love to know more about him too - I think as they search for and find his bones we will hear more in the press.

It took 4 years to organise the Richard dig etc.

What is interesting to me is that it is that Tudor King Henry the 8th [ again ] and Thomas Cromwell who disturbed his burial ground during their rape
and pillage of the monastries. Which is why apparently his grave became lost.

Bumping around the web it looks like the Alfred the Great Society is a right wing outfit having nothing to do with Alfred other than his name. I'll
wander off and not monoplolize this space, and later in the day the Americans will turn their lonely eyes to this thread to learn and be enlightened
to another of England's great Kings.

maybe ATS should set one up - there is considerable knowledge from the many posters on the history/ ancient threads. In fact the knowledge from some
posters on ATS is breath taking.

The Blowing Stone is a 3ft tall hunk of sarsen, pierced with a number of holes, from one of which issues a Y-shaped channel within. It is first
recorded on Roque’s map of 1761. If you are able to close the hole completely with your mouth and blow, it will resonate something like a calf's
bellow across the Downs. It can apparently be heard as far away as Faringdon Church (six miles distant). Legend says it once stood high up on
Kingstone Down and was used by King Alfred the Great to call the local militia to fight at the Battle of Ashdown - said to have taken place at nearby
Roughthorn Farm, though it probably occurred in either Compton/East Ilsley or Aldworth/Aston

Uffington horse and foal eating and drinking
The Uffington white horse is said to be a mare, and to have her invisible foal on the hill beside her, and at night the horse and foal come down to
eat at the slope below known as the Manger, and to drink at nearby Woolstone Wells, which latter were formed from a hoofprint from the horse.

As different as chalk and cheese
The expression "as different as chalk and cheese" is believed to refer to the land divided by Hackpen Hill, on which the Hackpen horse is cut. The
hill forms the boundary between the high chalk downs to the south of it and the clay cattle country to the north, where cheese is a product of the
milk from the cattle. The two areas are as different as chalk and cheese.

Uffington horse as a wish fulfiller
It is said that anyone who stands on the eye of the Uffington horse and turns around three times clockwise with their eyes closed whilst making a wish
will have that wish come true. Please don't try it, as visitors are now requested not to walk on the horse because of the damage that was being
caused to it.

Predicting a future husband
There was a belief that (real) white horses could predict the future husband of an unmarried girl. The girl would count the number of white horses she
saw until she reached one hundred. Then the first man she shook hands with after that would one day become her husband

Oh I like the legends of the white horse - it seems it was earlier then Alfred though.

Thanks Helen but i have to say i did teach history in a previous working life! (not sure if that counts as teaching or not!) Even so, some posters
have much better knowledge than me.

Sorry for going off topic but i feel the need to defend Henry VIII. He was truly popular at the time so he cannot have been bad can he? And by
popular, i mean seriously popular - the sort of rating approvals that politicians today could only dream about getting. He undertook the largest
building programme in Britain in history (up to that point of time) and the lot of his subjects improved considerably during his reign. Life
expectancy started to rise for the common man (although still rubbish by todays standards). It goes on and on.

And yet all we seem to remember is that he had 6 wives, set up the state religion so he could get a divorce and also for the Dissolution of the
Monasteries. In many ways, history has screwed him nearly as badly as it did to Richard III.

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